After a week of rumors and people noticing the silent announcement of ICW content leaving Peacock, word got out of the three promotions leaving the WWE Network at some point.
Both ICW and PROGRESS publicly announced their departure from the WWE Network today and announced where they will air their future events and handle any unaired footage from their WWE Network period. Both promotions have announced that they’ll be exploring other platforms to air their content on as well.
Insane Championship Wrestling’s Future
Insane Championship Wrestling will be airing their missing Christmas Day episode and the first episodes of 2023 on YouTube daily starting today until January 26th, totalling nine episodes. The first five episodes are already available on ICW On Demand with the other four getting a bulk-release on the paid service by Tuesday January 24th. The ICW Fight Club taping on January 29th from The Asylum will air live on ICW’s YouTube and Facebook channels. It’s likely that ICW will move to their paid service exclusively after the live airing, but nothing is announced beyond that point.
PROGRESS Wrestling’s Future
PROGRESS Wrestling will resume airing their events exclusively on their own streaming platform DemandPROGRESS starting with PROGRESS Chapter 148: Start Spreading The News, which will likely be watchable on January 28th. All PROGRESS Wrestling events from the first Chapter until 147, everything in between and after are and will be available on DemandPROGRESS. That would include their upcoming WrestleMania week show in Los Angeles as well.
The Future
The events of both ICW and PROGRESS will leave Peacock tomorrow. This will likely be the case for the international WWE Network as well, but it’s not fully sure if the change will be implemented at the same time at least. The third partner, Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw) haven’t announced their departure from WWE Network yet, EVOLVE has been acquired by WWE after ceasing operations in 2020, which makes it unlikely that their shows will leave Peacock and WWE Network.
It has been a true and legitimate honor and privilege to cover ICW and PROGRESS shows for this website. I’ve been following all four promotions since their partnership with WWE ramped up, but them leaving WWE doesn’t mean I’m leaving them. Nor am I leaving WWE Network News. With WWE still doing aired events outside of the American continent (yearly Saudi shows, MITB this year and, hopefully, NXT Europe as examples), I don’t think my work is done here quite yet. I enjoy covering events, as rare as I do them now that the quantity is dropping like flies.
On the other side: Personally, I see this as a blow to the WWE Network as they’re starved in new/current content (especially in-ring outside of PLE’s), most shows that aren’t PLE’s or NXT Level Up get sold off to other US based channels, keeping international eyes off of shows and forcing them to sail the high seas or never giving shows the light of day. The WWE Network, as much as I love the service, is turning more into an on-demand service than a Network, which to me violently stifles what the WWE Network is capable of being. I know money is the biggest reason for content complacency on this service, but I needed to get this off of my chest.
I sincerely hope WWE Network will face better days as what it can be, although I don’t trust it to be that anymore.
As always, stick to WWE Network News for the latest WWE Network news, results, and more!